Growing Up with Frugal Parents

Hey Everyone,
Well I find myself at times having to just turn OFF the news and the radio as all the doom and gloom talk keeps rolling around and I dont see how it helps anyone being told “Oh its bad, its bad, oh its getting worse”

I was raised by parents who were kids in the depression, and my mothers family were poor farmers. So my Mom has stories of eating Potato everything for meals as thats all they had. One doll at Christmas for a toy all year.

How they made syrup from sugar and water.

Anyways, my parents are well off and saved, invested, have good retirement plans. My Dad was with a company and was on the tail end of the great retirement plans where he even got excellent insurance benefits for the rest of my parents lives. Which just came in super handy with my mom having to get Radiation treatments(which was all covered by insurance and the dr commented on how excellent my moms insurance is)

My mom worked up until her 60s. My Dad worked the whole time they were here, he bought his home for our family with his money from the military.

But on top of that my parents bought apartment complexes upon arrival to California and the city I reside, and figured if need be they could live in these. But that didnt happen, they ended up with about 3 different complexes, one with 8, another 8 and then a larger set with about 30. They had others along the way they bought and sold. They bought a corner lot and added 4 more they had built.

At one time they bought some others on the same block that were becoming an eye sore and brought the value of the area back up.

My mom managed them, my life as a kid has many stories of sitting in vacant apartments or ones in need of cleaning with my toys and coloring books on the floor as my mom and the other resident her friend scrubbed the walls with buckets of hot water and tide with bleach mixed and on step ladders. Mom cleaned them all herself, no professional service, mom shampooed the carpets herself. She did repairs. They all contained refrigerators and stoves (those heavy duty cool looking ones people now collect and want for vintage styles) and those things last forever!

She fixed the sprinklers herself, she serviced the coolers on the roof (my Dad used to do that part but later mom took that on)

She did minor plumbing but when it got heavy duty then they called the old guy in they used. But she said they saved so much money not hiring others, and her one friend who helped clean got a discount on her rent (and lived there for over 20 yrs)

My mom was on site M-Fri half the day, the tenants knew her, knew her presence, for being lower priced older apartments, the place was in order and clean, good tenants as my mom was awesome at screening people, and she kept the neighborhood up as a result.

My parents sold these when the market was up few years back.

So those days are over, but I have so many memories and thats how my parents did so well, plus my Dad buys and resells real estate land. And hes had some very good spots hes held onto for many years and then they became desirable and a man once showed up at our house unexpected bugging my Dad repeatedly to buy (when it wasnt for sale) and ended up coming with an offer and the land was sold.

My parents didnt buy flashy cars, or clothing. My mom still shops at thrift stores and buys clothing there.

She showed me all the local thrifts and the hidden furniture store that nobody knows about but has been here ALL my life and its like a warehouse of real wood furniture, antiques and more current, but for an excellent price!(Half my house is furnished by this place)

We hardly went out to eat, my parents drove their cars for longer periods of time then most people, no leasing, no sports cars.

Yet friends would always say when they came over “Wow, you are rich!” and Id laugh because I never got the cool in toys at the holidays all the other kids got or the cool clothing. My clothes all pretty much came from Kmart all my life.

As a kid money wasnt handed to me, if I wanted something, even a candy bar or a pack of gum I had to buy it myself or “Borrow” and mom had a sheet of paper on the fridge with I.O.U. at the top. I had to record my purchase and pay it off with my allowance that week.

So I was far from spoiled.

But I also valued and treasured the things I did buy on my own because I had to purchase them, which is probably why I got into collecting toys, I held my toys to a standard to preserve them. So I didnt mangle them all and kept the original packaging even as a kid.

…more to follow…